it states in full knowledge of its excesses and its crimes so it must come as a surprise to to new zealand that the united states supported the forces of change in the country and it must come as a surprise to the egyptian teenagers who watched american to get out of their eyes to the us administration supported change in egypt must come as a surprise to those who heard hillary clinton insist that mumbai a regime was stable and when it was clear to everyone that it was not it must come as a surprise that the u.s. backed its hated intelligence chief of the mouse two women who we proved the us knew was a torturer to take the realm it must come as a surprise to him about his egyptian who heard vice president joseph biden declare

that hosni mubarak with the democrats and the jew in our sons was a high tech terrorist it is disrespectful to the dead and to the incarcerated of terrains uprising to claim that united states supported the forces for change that is indeed or that city who can say that it is not what else this is the president concerned to appear to look legally look back on this change the people's change and tries to call it his own and so we can take heart here too because it means that the white house has seen this progress is inevitable in this season of progress the president has saying which way the wind is blowing and he must now pretend that it is the administration who made a lot of very well this is better than the alternative to drift into irrelevance as

the world mouzon. so you must be clear here the united states is not the enemy its government is not uniform in some cases good people in the united states supported the forces of change perhaps barack obama personally was one of them but in others and on a mass early on it actively opposed them this is a matter of historical record and it is not fair and it is not appropriate for the president to distort that record for political gain or for the sake of uttering fine words credit should be given where it is cute that it should be withheld where it is not and as to these fine words they are fine words and we commend and agree with these tiny words we agree when president obama said yesterday that people can resolve their differences peacefully we can we agree that diplomacy can take the

place of war and we agree that this is an interdependent world that all of us have a stake in we agree that freedom and self-determination and not merely american or western values but universal values and we agree with the president when he says that we must take on asli if we are serious about these ideals but find where the language with that commiserate action president obama spoke out strongly in favor of the freedom of expression expression those in power he said have to resist the temptation to crackdown on dissent there are time for words and the time for action it is time. mr. there are time times the word and there are times for action the time for words has

run out. it is time for the u.s. to cease its persecution of wiki leaks to cease its persecution of our people and to cease its persecution of valid sources it is time for president obama to do the right thing and join the forces of change not in foreign words but in find the. thank you that was julian assange just speaking to us live from the ecuadorian embassy in london england he was granted permission to do this to speak as part of a segment called strengthening human rights by the foreign minister. of of aqua door. ok so we want to tell you a new development that just happened as well. just in the last day it's been revealed by the sydney morning morning herald i want to put up

a full screen of this newspaper article basically a freedom of information request. was done and was granted and basically the us air force counterintelligence released documents that said that military personnel who contact wiki leaks or wiki leaks supporters may be at risk of being charged with communicating with the enemy this is a military crime that carries a maximum sentence of death because julian assange and wiki leaks are now considered anime's of the state now we will talk much more about us on just speech in our eight o'clock hour as well as in future newscast we're going to go back now to the big picture with tom hartman. first hand knowledge that joe biden had. not joe biden that al gore had said the same thing to dick cheney and. and the president clinton said the same thing the joys of the bush. that being the case dick cheney was put in charge of the counterterrorism task force right after the inauguration and to the best my knowledge that task force never met until september

do i have that right there was a principals meeting. on september sixth of two thousand and one right so basically back was so dating is is. i'm trying to come up with a metaphor that i could see on television. throughout this this entire year of two thousand and one he's been charged with keeping the nation safe they've all been warned that this guy is coming the cia is virtually screaming at them the august sixth memo actually had a human being that a company to do that not who came out the old it all got it ok and bush like your personal briefings ok and and. and yeah george bush took the longest vacation in the history of the presidency that august and then after that he still didn't want to go back to washington d.c. you want to. florida where his brother walked down the state or state of emergency it's almost like he was afraid to go back to d.c. do you give any credit to that credibility to that conspiracy notion that it was

bush thought something awful was going to happen probably didn't know what it was but just didn't want to be around now i just i mean you you had bush acting on this education theme and that's why he was down in sarasota there you know people put a lot of conspiracy on it they put a lot of. attacking on bush and one of the things that sort of when you have three thousand dead bodies in the street one of the things that's very hard to say but it's the truth they messed up i'm that's it's we can put all sorts of big things on it they messed up and the reason they messed up. is just almost a level of explanation that hasn't been put on it because you can't start off by saying they messed up you have to bear in mind that one thousand nine hundred ninety two was the last time the republicans were in the white house when bush took over and one thousand nine hundred two national security issues were about other

countries china russia iran iraq. that was it there was no concept of an al qaeda or trams machinable threat that's the word of. the intervening years i mean you get a blue shake you'd have. told you i mean even i even reagan had lebannon right but what you had was. that emergence of the transnational threats you know threats that are not attached to a particular government happening under clinton clinton you know about the regardless of what some wants to be said now clinton taking that as a major issue of national security. when bush comes back comes into office the republicans are coming in the immediately revert to. other countries are the major national security issue they were faced with a situation where clinton and sandy berger and al gore are telling them the biggest

threat to american national security are you know these ragtag guys on a mountaintop in afghanistan who have managed to kill fifty americans in the past eight years they were right but you can stay if you as you put it that way which is how they were hearing it the bush administration was hearing it but those were the those are the ragtag guys who took down the soviet union no they weren't see that's the thing they're worth that's also one of the. myth ologies so it's been a lot and was not a sort of bin laden was part of what was called. the arab contingent you know you had in terms of dealing with the the soviet union you had this group of mujahideen who were the the indigenous population and they were really the fighting force then you had the arab militia could be and that group the bin ladin this and the rest were really almost. comical really i mean it was this

was this was the charlie wilson's war thing right and you had which of those groups was charlie wilson where we supported. the indigenous population which it didn't and the i mean there's a there's a fantastic book by steve cole which goes into this in a you know a great degree about what was bin laden's actual role and al qaeda the al qaeda subsequent you know called al qaeda group actual role in the fight against the soviet union and big one was a terrible military commander i mean just awful he was more of a post here you know and he like to make himself out to be this fellow who you know beat back the soviets but really what he did was get a bunch of his people killed for very little real. so i had interrupted you in that sentence my apologies you were you were saying that the bush administration didn't take seriously this red tape and that you're right and there was the sense i mean

there's a there's a washington post article that's been overlooked by many many people that came out around january of two thousand and one what was talking about the bush national security team and it didn't talk about this about starting to focus again on nation states and there was a quote i forget who it was there was a quote from a republican political foot person who said clinton has been focusing too much on the block and it was on the record quote but at that point that was the belief and it was not a horribly and reasonably believe given the republican experience with the intelligence over the eight years when al qaeda emerged now i do think then you get into all right what is their responsibility and there's a level of arrogance in the bush administration in terms of listening to the intelligence and accepting that you know you had the cia coming in and saying bin

was about to attack and the neo conservatives particularly in the pentagon come back with this theory that no bin ladin is working hand in glove with saddam hussein of iraq and it's all this big game and it's a false flag operation where bin ladin is pretending there's going to be an attack so we will stop paying attention to. apparently not only didn't know that bin laden had in fact declared war on iraq in one thousand nine hundred i mean that's what got him expelled from saudi arabia what you had this wasn't a sport it was an absurd theory and it was a theory that was brought to president bush with no support but they advanced it as you know this is the truth and so the cia is sitting there is it is if i said you know your car is being towed away. well actually what that has to do with is the fact that i haven't had you know i'm not being paid enough today you know it is two things that have nothing to do with the other not about me has to come in and stop

its feet with actual presidential daily brief saying no we are not being fools no be loving isn't pretending this is not of this information campaign that when you have the top intelligence operatives the united states telling that to the president of the united states two months before a major attack you've got a problem yeah and he clearly did more of our special edition of conversations with great minds or that was.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else or see some other part of it and realized everything you saw. i'm tom foreman is a big picture. here is mitt romney trying to figure out of that thing that we americans call a. i'm sorry i missed the guy who cares enough about you. sorry. little you know what kind of. want to feature a liberal. can secure the.

liberty to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're a profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break that. welcome back to a special edition of conversations with a great minds of kurt eichenwald i can always a contributing editor of vanity fair new york times best selling author of three books two time winner of the george polk award for excellence in journalism and a pulitzer prize finalist in two thousand and two thousand and two his most recent book is the critically acclaimed five hundred days secrets and lies in the terror

wars let's get back to it you just before the break you mentioned that. even in the face of all this evidence in these repeated warnings that al qaeda and osama bin laden were up to something that something was coming the bush administration kept throwing this back into the frame of this is dissin from ation coming to us from saddam hussein he's really the bad guy we need to keep our eye on him and that there was no basis for that. does this tie back to one thousand nine hundred eighty eight i mean there were there were a number of members of the administration that signed that document they hauled on president clinton to invade iraq and take out saddam hussein. they were there were so many people in the bush administration who went in with the absolute goal of we're going to take out saddam hussein. and. the problem with that is you wind up with bad application of intelligence if you've decided upfront here's our threat

this is what we're going to do with the intelligence comes in and it doesn't say that ok we'll forget it we're going to look at it from that perspective we were going to have a proposal to invade iraq with whether there was a nine eleven or not and when you actually start looking at what was happening between january twentieth of two thousand and one and nine eleven of two thousand and one the conclusion is inescapable they wanted to have a war against iraq they wanted to have saddam taken out after nine eleven. you know one of the one of the things i found amusing these brits are clarke who was the. white house terrorism czar for many years wrote a book in two thousand and four came out and said the day after nine eleven bush came up to me and said you know can you check one more time can you link this attack to iraq and the bush white house you know attacked him called him a liar this that the other well in fact the first time they brought up iraq and

nine eleven was on nine eleven you know. dick clarke was absolutely correct and if there is if we look at the historical record there's no denying that's what they would have wanted to do. was it i mean i've seen two kind of conflicting strands of history around that one is the. notion that. iraq is the center of the arab world the arab world an unstable place we've got to protect our ally israel cetera et cetera and if we can just put a giant footprint in the middle of iraq we've got it and you know arguably that was the the more reasonable rationalization for peace in that argument the other is mickey herskowitz the guy who was hired by george and barbara bush sr to write george bush's autobiography a charge to keep in one thousand nine hundred nine when he was making the decision to run for president and he wrote the first draft hundred hours of tapes of george w. bush and he's on the record as saying that in ninety nine george w.

bush told him that when his father invaded iraq he failed because he didn't extend the war long enough if he'd extended it into the next election cycle he would have won and that if george w. bush became president he wasn't going to have a failed presidency like his father he was going to have a war in iraq against saddam hussein it was going to get enough political capital that not only would he get reelected but that he could privatized social security and that's actually the sequence of events that he followed four years after mickey herskowitz came out with this minus the great support over the. iraq war well he thought i don't know if you recall in two thousand and five right after he was an r. rated he came out and said i got political capital i want to spend it lots privatized so security and that kind of but you know so is it possible that both stories are right that that one was personal one was institutional the both are wrong i mean i think that i think much bigger i think the idea of the united states getting a footprint in the middle east through iraq and therefore promoting the spread of

democracy all over the place i think that that was a real belief i think it was as silly a theory as has ever come out and you know it is. people whose children aren't fighting the wars are more likely to use theory as opposed to actual threat actual plans and that that i think is the real is the real. shame of the bush administration on when you go back and you look at the list of all the people who signed that document i don't think any of them or at least senior military officials i'm not sure that nobody even served in the military now . and i don't want to put too much attention on that i'm not sure that that's really what this is all about we mentioned earlier. is it is it true that george bush pitched religion and joshua to invade iraq and take out the sheer rock. you know the french and the russians were really doubtful about the intelligence.

on iraq and weapons of mass destruction and let me now take a moment to make sure we point out they were right yes you know it's sort of one of the people who well the french are wimps is like no the french were right. and so because of that and because they had the power in the u.n. to veto a resolution both tony blair the prime minister of england and bush were hitting russia and france. trying to get them on board and bush had a phone call with sheer rock where he was trying every angle it was you know we have to stop saddam that wasn't working if we don't work together the un will lose credibility that wasn't working and he tried one after another after another and chirac thought you know it's like it's like listening to somebody dance you know from room one side of the other reasons picking the next step and suddenly the next

step veered out of the room and bush said you know jacques. you're you're a catholic i'm a methodist but we both worship the same lord and god is coming to fruition and biblical biblical prophecies are being fulfilled and this confrontation is willed by god and chirac is listening to this and gets off the phone and says to his people do any of you know what he was talking about because god and magog i don't know if anybody listening to this knows what that is and bush was characterized as christianity versus. well he didn't say it that way but yeah it was christianity versus evil yeah you know and and the french the staff for sure rock hired a biblical scholar and i was you know one stop here the french are considering whether to join the iraq coalition and they feel the need to hire

a biblical scholar to analyze the bible for them to explain what bush was talking about there's something really wrong there and so comes out ends up that this god and magog they are out of the book of dizzy kill and the book of revelation and they relate to armageddon and so when chirac gets this. that's it i mean the decision the intelligence was bad he thought but at this point you know he's not going to commit french troops to a war base the way. put it based on the american presidents interpretation of the bible and so that was the end of it and we soon afterwards had freedom fries. so what tony blair is come under a lot of. righteous indignation is probably a way too weak a term to describe it but in the u.k. i mean tony blair's has been trashed up one side down the other calls for for even the him to be in the dock in the hague i mean from some fairly real politicians as

opposed to just you know people on the left or whatever how do you get him into this. tony blair was in a very difficult position. for many reasons one is. he believed just as bill clinton did and we have to make it very clear he believed that saddam had weapons of mass destruction and there is the real issue in that piece to take a moment aside is ok if he has them what do you do and you know the idea well let's launch a war against a guy with weapons of mass destruction you know maybe that's not the smartest approach but blair believed that the weapons were there and saddam would use them and so when you start from that it's well what's your next step blair was very troubled by the bush administration he thought that they were planning for the war was terrible he thought that their international approach was terrible that they

didn't you know reach out to the international community and nuff to create the kind of. global response that would actually be more fruitful then simply a war that they weren't planning for after the war and it really came down to a question he asked his advisors which is if we stay in this you know i will have influence on the direction of american policy if we break. it will be a fundamental break of a long standing relationship between the united states and britain and i will lose all influence over policy was there it should i do it well at the end of that and the time a story came out there was a subtext of that that was in the press let me reality check it with you and that was if we break i lose any influence over this crazy guy george bush. that's not the way the words were put but i think that was

a very strong it's actually more than this it was i lose i lose influence over those crazy guys cheney and rumsfeld who are being heard by president bush and in the end i can influence bush i cannot influence these crazy guys who are influencing him in net net summary would it be reasonable to say that nine eleven was a massive intelligence failure of the bush administration which had been amply warned by both the clinton ministration the cia that they shouldn't commit that failure i would say it was not an intelligence failure that the intelligence was more than strong enough to have a reaction i think it was a policy failure it was because you know you throw one fact out there was a a precedent in december of one nine hundred ninety nine we had massive warning that there was an attack coming the entire government went on alert and because of that

little bits and pieces of information were made you know were explored and made incredibly significant and at least three separate terrorist attacks were stopped in the summer of two thousand and one we didn't do that and i was want to throw out this reminder in august of two thousand and one we knew that there were two guys who were on the terror watch list who were in the united states and had been in new york. the f.b.i. assigned one fellow relatively new agent who had to wrap up some other work he was doing. to try and find those guys had we been on high alert there would have been a squad of f.b.i. agents on that and they would found them because it was not incredibly hard to find and those two guys were two of the nine eleven hijackers kurt eichenwald thank you so much for being with us and have and more importantly thank you for the brilliant reporting in this book five hundred thank you thank you kurt eichenwald to see this

in other conversations of the great minds go to our web site conversations and great minds dr. and that's the way it is the night wednesday september twenty sixth two thousand and twelve don't forget democracy begins when you show up get out there get active tag your suitable.

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